What happens in Vegas ...

... doesn't stay in Vegas.  Between the editorial blogging, live-blogging and micro-blogging coming out of Las Vegas this past week, anyone with an RSS feed reader and a twitter habit was probably well informed.  I'm still trying to review the week's events and announcements in light of our company's product and business plans, not to mention the impact on the virtualization market ecosystem.  Heady stuff, because there was so much.

What seems undeniable:

Maritz and the VMware organization has proven their ability to retake some thought leadership and generate momentum.

What struck me:

The theme I noted most at VMworld 2007 a year ago was "security."  This year, it seemed noticeably absent.  My sense is that the industry has yet to catch up and capitalize on VMsafe. Because all of the "next generation" of offerings from VMware and the independent providers are still in development, no one made too much of security issues.

I heard and saw a lot of backup and DR.  Storage is big, and the converged I/O required to make it sing within the virtualized datacenter made a pretty significant showing at VMworld 2008.

I assume that it wasn't just my own interest in network technologies, but this was the show at which the networking of the virtualized datacenter really got its props.  VMware's distributed virtual switch and Cisco's Nexus 1000v are the two most apparent indicators.  And, there seems to be an appreciation for the importance and complexity of "getting the networks right." -- access networks and storage networks, but no mention of the VOIP nets... yet.

And then, there's "cloud computing."  The term itself is now close to useless, since there are so many takes on it.  That said, I've enjoyed the secondary effect of terminology like "cloud bursting" (spanning the enterprise datacenter and the to-the-public utility service in order to scale-out / scale-up in response to demand or need) or "cloud formation" (the level at which condensation occurs -- the requirements and resources encourage the formation / adoption of utility computing.)

I'll continue to mine the feeds and articles over the next week or so to see what resonates and see if I can't also tease out some early indicators.

Comments

[beaker]

You said:

"...no one made too much of security issues."

Well, that's not entirely accurate. ;)

/Hoff

[Rich Miller]

Hoff,

You're absolutely correct ... and I continue to be grateful for the unremitting attention you give to virtualization and security, particularly network security.

My sense at the show was that the vendor community (and even VMware itself) is dodging most of the security issues being raised by developments like the distributed virtual switch. Last year's show seemed to spotlight Blue Lane, Catbird, et. al. This year? Even after the amount of noise made about Altor, there seemed to be very little said.

What do you think about the notion that the vendors are flying low while trying to figure out VMsafe?

[beaker]

Funny you should mention that:

http://rationalsecurity.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/vmwares-virtsec-visionvirtual-validation.html

The vendors are absolutely developing for VMsafe, because they don't have much of an option...you notice the switch lately? Last year all the ISV's said they were developing for VMware and Citrix/Xen was next.

Well, that's changed as now it's VMware as a *way* solid first and Hyper-V to hedge the bets, for reasons I stated in my post.

/Hoff